Jump
by LannaKitty
Summary: Ashley is now the smallest voice in her head


Title: Jump

Author: lannakitty

Summary: She is the smallest voice in her head.

Type: Drama, Angst

Characters: Ashley Magnus

Warnings: Violence

Spoilers: Revelations II

Disclaimer: Don't own them

A/N: Ashley headspace piece following the events of the Season 1 finale. Some stuff I've had in my head that's finally made it it out. Thanks to stoicana and kat_rowe who did beta work for me.

* * *

_Jump_

She appears, taking the room by surprise. They have no chance but they don't know that yet, so they rise from their mismatched seats around the card table. The shock makes them slower than they would be. Her gun fires, a hollow "thwop-thwop" sound as the darts pass through the silencer. This is an increasingly rare instance. She will be followed by a clean-up team and this group of abnormals will live. At least for now.

Her body is not her own as she methodically works through the warehouse the strange _other_ personality using her mind and body to appease her masters. A minute after she appears, the warehouse is silent. She signals the team.

_Jump_

She arrives to find the battle going badly for her side. She identifies the leader. She jumps again and a single bullet between his surprised eyes ends the fight.

There is another voice in her head now, a small whisper distinct from the one that answers her masters. The other voice likes the fear on the face of the dead abnormal's lieutenant. He lays his weapon down, but someone on the Cabal team shoots him anyway.

Ashley shoots him for it. She can't kill them, but she can punish them for being messy. The man goes down with a satisfying howl.

She wonders just which personality found it satisfying.

_Jump_

She stalks the halls and the underlings scatter. Her name is synonymous with death here. She feels powerful and that which controls her revels in it. She likes it, too, and that terrifies her. She is not in control of her actions as she walks beside her new master like a trained attack hound. There is a meeting and she is an accessory. The new voice wants her to kill everyone in the room and on some level, she agrees. But she is controlled and couldn't act on it even if she wanted to. It was softer last week.

She listens to their plans with a tactician's ear, understanding the implications for her friends, her family. She aware also that the voices seem to understand and can use her skills against her family. It's dangerous to listen closely, she might be asked her opinion on making the Cabal more secure and she would have to answer. She hopes and prays her family will come for her and she will have something of value for them.

It won't erase her crimes, but she has little else to cling to.

Dana Whitcomb imperiously waves her away on another task and she leaves.

_Jump_

The voices are both stronger now. There are two of them. The Jailer is not her. It is alien and ordered and lives to serve. It is in control. The other voice scares her more. She calls it Ripper and it whispers in the dark, delighting in being an instrument of violence and yearning for the freedom to strike down the hated masters controlling her.

She fears she's always known Ripper, that the drugs she's subjected to on a nightly basis are not the source.

_Jump_

She wonders if it hurts this much for Druitt, or if she's somehow doing it wrong. She appears and the battle starts and is over quickly. She jumps around, executing her targets before they can get a bead on her. Her masters have ordered no mercy and she gives none, body moving against her will as she clears the safehouse her mother set up.

Each jump leaves a piece of her soul behind.

Each death murders another part.

She surveys the carnage with two thoughts, one crying for release from this torture and one looking for survivors to execute. She hears the particle-whisper of a teleport and faces her father.

"Help me," she pleads, even as she is compelled to fire her weapon. She thinks she sees sympathy as he disappears.

_Jump_

She wakes and is subject to testing. She dresses and is fed. If there is a mission she is briefed and then executes her orders. If there is not, she is allowed access to a small training room. The machines are bolted to the floor. There are no free weights or exposed cables she could use as a weapon.

If she has been on a mission she is debriefed and once again sent into the mercy of the Cabal quacks. They poke and prod and grope and she hates them. They pervert a profession she has been raised to view as a noble service to others. If they weren't so terrified of her she thinks they'd take further liberties with her controlled body. She wonders if it is a good thing or a bad thing they're scared.

She is fed again then is allowed to shower. There is always a guard. Sometimes her puppet master comes to see her. Her replies are automatic and scripted; mechanical. Ashley hates this woman but she's learned to conceal it because the drugs are always worse if they think she's fighting. She's tired of fighting.

Her cell is small and institutional. The bed is uncomfortable and welded to the floor. The room is too warm. The Jailer goes to sleep and Ashley feels like she has more control, but what little she has is sluggish. Her dreams are vivid and terrifying.

She wakes and is subject to testing.

_Jump_

Ripper wants her to kill everyone and Ashley finds it hard to disagree, but she's not in control.

She has just killed a small armed force of nearly twenty abnormals because they could possibly be a threat. Ashley knew these people before and what's left of her soul is a ragged, bloody mess. She can't remember how long she has been captive in her own body. She hasn't killed anyone from home and the encounter with Druitt was weeks ago.

Maybe months ago.

Time seems off now and she can't keep track. She thinks it might be the drugs but she's afraid it is the teleporting. She hasn't seen a friendly face in forever, and she's glad of that fact, but she's left to wonder. Have they written her off?

Her orders are complete and her Jailer sends her home.

_Jump_

They want her to kill Henry or bring him in. He's some kind of pedigree werewolf and they want him, dead or alive. They ask her questions and she tells them almost everything she knows because she isn't in control. She fights them hard on this one, because Henry is her oldest friend and she'd rather be subject to the evil doctors than give them what they want.

They decide not to use her in the end. She is subject to more tests and more drugs and more of Dana Whitcomb telling her she's saving the world. She's dumped back in her cell and Ashley is left wondering if maybe she should have gone along with the plan if only because there could have been an opportunity to escape.

Jailer is asleep and the Ripper whispers in the back of her mind.

_Jump_

She is the smallest voice in her head. Each jump leaves her diminished and no one cares or notices as long as she keeps doing their dirty work. She's in Paris, then Tokyo, then New York, Boise, London, Vancouver, Changwon, Dallas, Cairo, Duluth, Adelaide, Chicago, Rome, Terra Haute, Mumbai, Saskatoon, Amsterdam; a hundred cities and secret bases. It is terrifying how global the Cabal is, how many resources they have at their disposal. She could tell her mother so many things about them, how they are set up and how contemptuous the leadership is.

The tattered remains of her soul ache. She thinks another jump might kill her and she'll never be able to redeem herself. She'll never be able to forgive her mother for keeping secrets from her or ask for forgiveness for being too prideful.

She wears a thin set of scrubs and waits for the so-called doctors to run their daily tests. They are running late but arrive in good humor, smirking and laughing. The older one has a splash of blood on his coat and she feels chilled. He leers at her as he has an assistant discard the soiled garment. And then he touches her.

It takes about thirty seconds for him to die, his carotid slashed easily under the knife she grabbed. Ripper laughs in glee and Ashley finds her voice hoarse. The floor is warm and sticky under her bare feet and the assistant is shocked when she slits his throat too. She puts on a long coat, steals their shoes and runs form the room. The Jailer is crying in the back of her mind, slowing her down, but the Ripper is free.

Ashley is carried along for the ride.

The EM generator is on the fifth level of the building. They always have it on when she is not out. She trades scalpels for bigger knives and automatic weapons and lets the voice kill anything that moves. She is so tired of fighting.

There is an explosion and she can feel the EM shield drop. She staggers in relief because it has been smothering her for weeks now, a hot, fuzzy blanket she could not remove. She is about to jump, but pauses at the sound of gunfire elsewhere in the facility.

Ashley is struck in the back of the neck and her limbs feel heavy. She drops to her knees and tries to grasp at her ability to teleport but it slips through her mental fingers like water. She is still trying to jump away when the guards roughly haul her to her feet, taking her weapons. She screams rage and frustration as the controlling personality reasserts itself then silences her and she is once again their automaton.

Another explosion rocks the building. Half the guards leave to investigate; the others shove her back in her cell. She glares at the door and strains for sounds of what is going on because she can't do much else.

When the door opens and Will is there, she is shocked and so is he. It takes him a second to call over his shoulder for backup and then Henry is there too and Druitt as well. Ashley tries desperately to crawl to the top of her own mind because part of her wants to raise an alarm and another part wants to kill them both and take their weapons.

"You're covered in blood," Henry tells her.

"None of it's mine," she manages.

"I brought help," Druitt says, joining the group. "Can you teleport home?"

She shakes her head, he grits his teeth and jumps them all home.

_Jump_

She wants nothing to do with teleportation, she decides. Not for a very long time. She feels empty inside, and cold. Her mother removed the Cabal's controlling influence, a nasty creature like the one they'd used on her grandfather. The weight of what she'd done isn't so easily excised. Everything aches and she doesn't like sleeping because the nightmares start the moment she closes her eyes.

Ashley gives them a long, complete account of the Cabal's workings, telling them everything she observed, every location she was sent to, every crime she committed. She stares at the wall because she cannot bear the looks of horror she thinks she will find on their faces. She doesn't tell them about how much it hurts to teleport.

Her soul is gone and the Ripper wants her to kill them all.


End file.
